


a hand to hold onto (and if it feels right)

by translorastyrell (nerddowell)



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin
Genre: Alternate Universe - Modern Setting, Canonical Character Death, Grief/Mourning, Hurt/Comfort, M/M, Tenderness
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-04-07
Updated: 2019-04-07
Packaged: 2020-01-06 11:32:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 887
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18387584
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/nerddowell/pseuds/translorastyrell
Summary: If you need someone to talk toA hand to hold onto and if it feels rightThese arms are open all night





	a hand to hold onto (and if it feels right)

**Author's Note:**

> It's taken me literally seven years to be able to listen to some Bon Jovi songs because of a trauma response. But the boys are officially back in town, baby, and so as usual I've broken my own heart writing angsty shit based on their songs!

Loras is sitting on the side of the bed, running his hands through tangled curls and trying to breathe out all of the anxiety tying his stomach in knots. It’s not working. There’s still a body lying beside him with the blankets tangled around long tan limbs, a spill of dishwater blond hair over the pillow and lids closed over hazel eyes. In short, it’s not his boyfriend who’s lying there next to him.

Not that his boyfriend is ever going to lie next to him in bed in the mornings again, because he’s dead. Has been for the last eight months, ever since his Fiat was t-boned by an SUV at a junction five minutes away from their home. Renly’s funeral was two weeks later, organised by Stannis, and that was another kick in the teeth. The last person Renly would want organising his send-off from the world would be his middle brother, who had the sense of humour of a lobster and wouldn’t know what Renly would want even if he had left a list. Which he hadn’t; he was only twenty-three when he died.

Olyvar blinks himself awake and smiles sleepily, nuzzling close and wrapping his arms around Loras’ waist. Loras thinks about shrugging him off, the feeling of Olyvar’s warm skin against his still foreign, even after a month of them doing whatever it was they were doing. Margaery thinks it’s a good thing; she had told him it was healthy, that he was ‘finally putting himself back out there’. Loras doesn’t see it like that. He spends most of his time trying and failing to convince himself that he’s not betraying Renly every time he takes Olyvar to bed.

‘What’s up?’ Olyvar asks him, voice husky and thick with sleep, and Loras just shrugs.

‘Nothing.’

‘He wouldn’t mind,’ Olyvar says softly, rehearsedly. They’ve had this conversation a thousand times over the past month, after all. ‘He’s not here _to_ mind.’

‘You think I don’t fucking know that?’ Loras snaps back, angry, and wrenches his body out of Olyvar’s grasp. ‘You think I’d even fucking be here if he was?’

Olyvar lets the words slide off his back, refusing to let the barbs catch. ‘I know I’m not the one you want. _You_ know that. I’m not here to be a replacement for him. I’m here to be whatever I can be, to make this as much better as I can.’ He reaches out, his voice trembling as much as his hand. ‘Loras.’

‘I don’t love you,’ Loras tells him, but his voice is tired, strained, and there’s tears in his eyes.

‘I don’t need you to,’ Olyvar murmurs. He wraps Loras in a hug, pulling him back against his chest, kisses his forehead and stroking his hair whilst Loras’ tears spill over his shoulder and chest. ‘But you’re allowed to feel something for me, even if it’s just – I don’t know, gratitude, or something.’

Loras makes a wet choking noise and buries his face deeper into the crook of Olyvar’s shoulder, his arms tight around the younger man’s neck. He sobs, raw and hitching and heartbroken, and Olyvar keeps stroking his hair as Loras mumbles into the warm tan skin.

‘I miss him,’ he pants, swallowing a sob with an ugly gurgling noise. ‘I miss him so much I can’t breathe.’

Olyvar nods, not saying a word, just humming soothingly and continuing to rub circles over Loras’ back, smoothing down his hair, and letting his lips brush Loras’ cheek in tiny chaste little kisses. That seems to make Loras worse, however; his sobs turn into horrible half-screams, his breathing coming in great gasps and pants and shoulders shaking.

‘Renly used to d-do tha-at,’ he wails, and Olyvar tenses slightly.

‘Do you want me to stop?’

‘No-o,’ Loras moans, shaking his head violently. He doesn’t want Olyvar to ever stop doing that, because if he closes his eyes, he can pretend – and half-believe – that it’s still Renly, still his boyfriend’s lips he can feel on his face kissing every last tear away, the way he did when Loras proposed and he said yes, the way he did when Loras’ cat died, the way he did after they argued when Loras’ temper boiled over and he cried with frustration. He’s shaking in Olyvar’s arms, and the younger man shushes and soothes him, so gentle it stings on Loras’ raw nerves.

‘You don’t have to love me,’ Olyvar whispers softly to him, rocking them like a parent with a crying baby, ‘as long as you let me love you, at least a little bit.’

Loras mumbles, ‘don’t want you,’ but there’s no sting in it, and his voice is going from raw with pain to thick and slow with exhaustion, sleep starting to pull at him with heavy limbs.

‘I know,’ Olyvar says quietly, ‘but I’ll do for now.’

Loras nods as Olyvar lays them down against the pillow, eyes falling closed and mouth falling open slightly on a soft snore. There’s a photo on the nightstand of Loras sleeping, nestled on Renly’s broad chest, Renly’s arm slung over him and Renly kissing the top of Loras’ curly head. He looks exactly the same now as he does in the photo, and Olyvar tightens his arm around Loras’ waist, brushing his lips over Loras’ hairline.


End file.
